A love letter to THE city

Whenever I tell people I’d lived in NY, I usually get two extreme reactions, those who are as passionately enthusiastic about it as I am and tell me they love the city as much as I; then, the others, whose usual response is, "It’s a great city, but I don’t know how people can live there" which translated into a polite way of telling me that although they appreciate and enjoy all proverbial tourist attractions that the city has to offer, they could never fathom being there for longer than a week … max.

I absolutely fell in love with NY from the first moment I step foot in the city.

I was in my mid-teens, and my mother had visited a friend of hers in Queens, with whom we’d stayed for few days, and those were the most exciting few days of my teenage life. NY was the polar opposite of the middle class suburban environment in which I’d grown up. It was fast-paced, wonderfully diverse, full of energy and excitement, and most of all, REAL.

Human interactions and emotions are in your face and displayed in the open for anyone who care to observe them. People from all walks of life from all over world interact and sometimes clash as naturally as breathing air, and in the city of over 8 million, people move about as if they’re engaged in a dance, which only the natives of the city know.

Most of all, it’s a city that enables you to experience the world … or at least a great introduction to it … and gives you an opportunity to meet amazing people under the most extraordinary circumstances.

It’s a city that allows you to experience life that’s far more exciting than any story that Hollywood can put a spin on … and that’s why people … I loved living there.